The word ZANZIBAR is of Persian or Arabic origin. The Persians derive the name from Zangh Bar, meaning "the Negro Coast." On the other hand the Arabs deduce the name from the Arabic Zayn Z'al Barr, meaning "Fair is this land", an epithet that aptly describes the striking beauty of the country.   Norman Bennett writes in his book - A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar (pp.1):

                              "There is surely nothing more beautiful on earth' exclaimed an early twentieth century   visitor at his first sight of the island of Zanzibar, sharing a reaction common to most travellers to that Indian Ocean island."

The name Zanzibar once applied to the whole of the East African coast with its adjacent islands, from Somalia to Mozambique, and far into the interior of Zaire. Before that the Coast was known as the Coast of Ausan, after the "kingdom which was the first in Arabia". The whole area was dotted with towns at various stages of development, each one of them being practically a state by itself, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes in co-operation with one another. Occasionally various city states would recognize the supremacy of one of their number as head among equals, as it happened in the case of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Indeed it might even be that the city states would swear allegiance to an outside suzerain authority as they did to the ancient rulers of Yemen, to the Imam of Oman, to the Caliph of all-Islam, to the Portuguese rulers, or to the British crown. It was also not unusual for the rulers of different city states to be inter-related, as it happened in the case of Hassan bin Ali and his six sons from Shiraz who together formed a loose sort of empire known as the Daulat-e-Zinj or the Zenj Empire. Such a pattern existed and to a certain extent still exists among the ruling families of various European states. And thus it came about that the Al Busaid of Zanzibar, the Nabhani of Pate, the Bani Hashim of Pangani.

Zanzibar and the Comoro Isles have had their relations in Hadhramout and Oman. What happened with the ruling classes happened also with the rest of the population. Intermingling is life's tradition from antiquity, and its continuation is a historical necessity. How much influence the coastal states had with the interior of Africa depended upon varying factors, such as the power and political acumen of rulers, or the love of adventure and boldness of traders and pioneers enjoying the protection of such rulers. And so it became common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for one to say: "When one pipes in Zanzibar they dance on the lakes." When Said bin Sultan established his seat on the island of Zanzibar as his capital his authority extended to cover not only the Coast and the Isles, but the whole of Tanganyika, Malawi and Zaire, to the borders of Sudan, where his influence came into contact with that of the ruler of Egypt and Sudan, Muhammad Ali the Great.

When Ibn Batuta, the famous Arab traveller and author, visited East Africa in the fourteenth century he was amazed to find that the Swahili people were as well housed, clothed and fed as the Europeans of his time. Dr William Hichens describes that civilization in Islam To-day thus:

                     "By the dawn of the fourteenth century the fair citadels of Islam lay like a string of lustrous pearls along the green cushion of verdant coast."

With regard to the cultural and intellectual level he says:

                    "By the wealth in his warehouse a man might be adjudged but it was by the wealth in the storehouse of his mind, as a poet a jurist, a theologian that he won that renown, respect and esteem which in these lands is called heshima. The early Arabian settlers had brought with them the art of writing, a marvel unknown elsewhere in Bantu Africa. They had brought with them too their traditional love of the arts of the poet and the bard."

How did this come about?

Professor Coupland admits in his book - East Africa and Its Invaders, that East Africa has never seen from the Arabs a dark period of conquest. It was all peaceful penetration. Rev. Lyndon Harr ies explains in his book - Islam in East Africa:

                   "Islam depends almost entirely for the spread of its faith upon the influence of the Muslim community. When social distinctions are overcome, the progress of conversion is likely to be accelerated. This is why the thrust from Southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf has resulted in the majority of conversions from paganism to Islam. By marriage with the Bantu women, the Arab merchants were finding a home in East Africa not only for themselves, but for their religion as well. The true Swahili are now a Bantu people, and the social gulf between the Arabs and the Bantu has been bridged. It is a bridge that many tribal Africans are attracted to cross. For them it leads, not only to Mecca, but to a companionship with fellow-believers of at least some common blood."

However, one must always be on guard against the intrigues of the jealous ones whose faiths build no bridges because of the racial barrier that hasalways barred the intermingling of their races. The traditional ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.), the Prophet Ismail (a.s.) was from the very start a product of an Asiatic Semite and an African Hamite. In other words he was a half-breed, a chotara, a half-caste, a derogatory word in the west, but having no Swahili or Arabic equivalent.